Do You Know Who The Greatest Bicyclist Ever, Is

Professional bicyclist Lance Armstrong, born on September 18, 1971, as Lance Edward Gunderson. He is without a doubt one of the most astounding athletes ever born. At the age of 12 years old, he started out his career by winning in an adult competition. He actually started out as a tri-athlete. He was ranked as number 1 in 1987 and 1988 in the Tri-Fred. He received a status of professional tri-athlete. Then in 1989 and 1990 he won the triathlon championship. He concluded the race at the 14th position in the 1992 Summer Olympics. At the World Road Race, he became the youngest rider to win the championship.

In 1999, Lance Armstrong proceeded to win the highest prestigious race, Tour de France and after that went on to earn it 7 years in a row, from 1999 to 2005 which in turn broke the prior record set by Miguel Indurian, who won the race five times consecutively. In 1999 ABC television network titled him the Wide World Sports Athlete of the Year. In 2002, he was named the Wide World Sports Athlete by Sports Illustrated magazine. For 4 sequential years, from 2002-2005 he was named Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year. In 2003, the BBC, gave him the Sports Personality award of the Year recognized as the Overseas Personality Award.

Lance Armstrong has protected his victories by revealing that he had trained for many months in Spain. He was able to win the Tour de France seven times consecutively because all his emphasis was solely on the Tour de France and he would not be involved in any other competition, which provided him the opportunity to train for one hundred and eighty days at a time. For the duration of that period former cyclist Chris Carmichael, who was also his coach, trained him.

Armstrong reported he was able to maintain greater cadence in a lower gear in comparison with past champions who put to use a high gear and incredible strength. High cadence leads to a reduced amount of leg muscles stress in comparison to lower pedal rotation, which leads to severe leg muscle contractions. He also had a substantial aerobic threshold. His higher pedaling cadence was attributed to his low lactate level, which was his most unique quality.

Even though Armstrongs team was not very strong to begin with in the Tour de France, the later wins he achieved, raised the team level. Armstrong is furthermore a part of the US Postal Service bicycling team. Although regrettably his US postal service team members were not a match to his caliber and frequently he was isolated. He strengthened this team by making sponsors and equipment suppliers work together. He did this by acquiring bicycle parts which at the time, were being designed by different companies. Because they were separate companies, they never interacted with one another. Armstrong with able to get the sponsors and the bicycle part suppliers to work collectively so they could take complete advantage of all the resources available. Lance Armstrong generated such an impact that still today, there are numerous companies in the cycling circuit that have taken this approach.

Lance Armstrong has saddly had more than his fair share of life's troubles. In 1996, He underwent brain and testicular surgery. Testicular cancer had been detected in the 3rd stage and the cancer had spread to his brain, lungs and his abdomen. His chances of survival were only at 3 percent. Due to the extremely low survival rate, he elected for a dangerous chemotherapy treatment so he could resume his career. His incredibly courageous recovery and his astonishing success influenced him to lay the foundation for his charity, The Lance Armstrong Foundation, established in 1997. He went back to bicycling after just three years and won, the first of seven, Tour de France titles by triumphing over Alex Zulle by seven minutes and thirty-seven seconds.

There were people over the years, who doubt his achievements and claim that Armstrong took performance-enhancing drugs to win in certain cases. Not one of these allegations could ever be verified. There has in no way been any evidence brought forth at all.

Did you know Lance Armstrong has even appeared in the movies? You could have seen him in the movie Dodgeball, or maybe in 2004 the movie called A True Underdog Story, or maybe You, Me and Dupree, made in 2006.

Lance Armstrong took his retirement at the closing of the 2005 Tour de France racing event, on July 24, 2005. After retiring, he has been centred on his charity foundation and has taken part in numerous marathons.

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